The present invention generally relates to linear guide units.
More particularly, it relates to a linear guide unit which has an elongated guide housing with a longitudinal axis and with walls which limit a guide hollow space and has free ends which limit at least an longitudinal opening of the guide hollow space, two guide rails provided in the guide hollow space each for displaceably guiding a wagon in direction of the longitudinal axis, a connection unit for connecting the wagons to a wagon arrangement, a connecting part extending through the longitudinal opening and connecting the wagons to an object to be guided in direction of the longitudinal axis, and a cover element arranged between movement tracks of the connection part and covering connection units of the guide housing located at its ends and also the longitudinal opening.
Such a linear guide unit is disclosed for example in the German patent document DE 197 38 988 A1. With this linear guide arrangement the cover element is held with a pulling stress on the connection units of the guide housing located at the ends. Thereby a sagging of the cover element must be prevented, since the wagon arrangement otherwise during its movement on the cover plate would slide at least over a part of its movement path, which would lead to an undesirable noise generation during the operation of the linear guide unit. It has been shown however in practice that setting of the cover element under the pulling stress represents an efficient measure against a sagging of the cover element only to a certain maximum length. For long linear guide units the cover element slides on the wagon arrangement.